I’m moving around online leftist circles for more than a decade. First I wanted to have some unity with tankies, but I had to slowly learn that it’s a futile attempt, with the main issue being their idea of unity being total assimilation.

First of all, just like their authoritarian-right counterparts, don’t play by the rules, but expect other to do so, except it’s only for the libertarian-left (or anyone who’s not as authoritarian as Stalin). This leads to them forming online (and from what I’ve heard, real life) spaces to their liking, usually with the intent to turn what they call “moderates” into “full-fledged Marxist-Leninists”. If you don’t they will bait others to harass you, usually by finding something in your past. Often they also work in tandem with far-right groups by providing anonymous information to them, and register accounts to their forums (kiwifarms etc) to get help from them. They often managed to even manipulate the discourse around social causes, they singlehandedly managed to remind people that “spook” also used to be an anti-black slur (they got really angry at egoist leftist memes), and part of the reason why some online leftists are sometimes terminally online about loli/shota (around that time, they really wanted to cancel sex-positive leftists en masse, consensual-noncon also got a hit but that wasn’t really part of a fandom that needed a “safe space” for right wingers, hence the frequent cooperation with the right).

One of their greatest display of “manipulating the rules” is their constant redefinition of authoritarianism into “the will of the people” rather than “a hierarchial system of power formed around a select number of people, whom must be submitted to by the rest of the people”. On some level, authoritarianism is “will of the people”, but tankies (likely intentionally) forget that dictators having pet projects and banning things they don’t like isn’t the same as liberation of the people who often want to free themselves from those strongmen, and not replace them with someone who promises to be kind. This is not their only use of the “redefinition game”: they often like to redefine porn as something inherently exploitative, while promising general sexuality will be fine, then they proceed to act in ways people who define porn as “an ungodly act of perversion”, but pretend they’re doing it in favor of “progress” rather than saving the masses from the eternal burning fire. On paper, “authoritarian social justice” sounds good, but in practice it can be only be done with things that are “concrete”. You can stop people from denying the holocaust, you probably could also stop social media accounts calling all LGBTQ+ people pedophiles, but then there’s the issue of sexual objectification in media, which will be on very shaky grounds, and should not be put into law. China put a lot of effort into trying to regulate it, but other than tankie puriteens on Twitter, no one likes it, and often gets workarounds.

Sorry for my personal ramble here, even forgot why I was answering your comment, but the TLDR is that the auth-left and auth-right have way more in common than the auth-left and lib-left, which is especially sad since capitalism itself is a form of authority around wealth.

Lol

Ukraine started the war by defending itself. Classic warmongering tactic.

How is this bleeding the US? I thought we were giving them cast-offs the military had no interest in using anyway.

that’s decidedly not our problem.

Disagree. The putin propaganda parties are fucking up every democracy possible - most importantly, or perhaps most relevantly to this topic, the US. And the invasion and destruction of Ukraine is the proof that it’s working. We’ve got to help Ukraine win, rebuild, and be a peaceful and prosperous democracy because russia will stop at nothing to bend everything to them.

trump and the Qult will stop at nothing to help putin destroy the US ideals and become a malleable Christofascist oligopoly like they are. If you think Ukraine is not our problem you’re not addressing our problem. Ukraine is the leading edge of the problem.

Military industrial complex is relatively tiny.

If you want to see who will be the end of us, follow the bigger fish.

Oil companies will destroy the environment.

Agrochemical companies will destroy biodiversity.

Food companies will make us obese.

Social media companies will misinform and divide us.

While I agree, Russia has no right to annex territory in Ukraine or Georgia or anywhere else, and I agree, like any rational person will, that Ukraine has every right to defend itself to the fullest extent, including matching on Moscow and fucking up the place, that’s decidedly not our problem.

How convenient that every time a moral issue comes up that we’re on the right side of, it’s not our problem.

I haven’t seen actual support from the left in real life, but more some sort of vague both-siding and “understanding” and stuff like that. And that’s come from both left and right (not center-left or center-right), but as a minority opinion. Old Stalinists, some left-wingers closer to the left side than center, then some right to far right. I think for the left it might also be the heritage of USSR alignment and peace mindedness. For the right, I’m not even really sure. Some sort of “anti-West” in the sort of “anti-globalism” sense which make you go hmmmm and then there’s been some pretty sus financial ties.

Nice what aboutism. Not like russia did just as many atrocious things, but keep pretending. Just makes you look like a russian troll, not like a “third worlder”

And Russia literally teamed up with the Nazis and only fought back because they were stupid enough to get betrayed. Russia has a pretty colorful history if you wanna get down to the nitty gritty of things.